Hormones May Not Raise Alzheimer’s Risks

Oct. 24, 2012 -- Women who take hormones within five years of menopause may have a slightly lower risk of Alzheimer's disease compared to women who don’t ever take them, a new study shows.

The study, which is published in the journal Neurology, provides some support for a theory called the timing hypothesis. The timing hypothesis suggests that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may be safer and perhaps even offer some longer-term benefits when it’s started within a few years of menopause.

It comes on the heels of early results from the Kronos Early Estrogen Prevention Study. That study found that hormones didn’t help or harm memory or thinking over four years of therapy.

“This new evidence adds a layer of reassurance for women if they were to consider taking hormones” for menopausal symptoms, says Victor W. Henderson, MD, professor of neurology at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. Henderson wrote an editorial on the study, but was not involved in the research.

Estrogen and the Brain

Researchers have long believed that estrogen protects women’s brains as they age. That belief was based on animal studies and studies of women who were followed and compared after they made their own choices about whether or not to take hormones.

But in 2003, an arm of the large, government-funded women’s health initiative (WHI) trial unexpectedly showed that women taking estrogen in combination with progestin had nearly twice the risk of developing dementia as women who were assigned to take daily placebo pills.

Those findings are part of the reason experts now advise women against taking hormones after menopause to prevent diseases like osteoporosis and heart disease.

The findings of the WHI carry a lot of weight because unlike most other studies of HRT, WHI is a randomized, controlled trial. That means researchers were able to first balance and then randomly assign two groups of women to get hormones or daily placebo. Following those women revealed that women taking hormones were actually at greater risk of dementia than women who didn’t take hormones.

But the WHI wasn’t ideal. Most of the women in the study started taking hormones when they were well past menopause, which isn’t the way most women take them today. Experts have long wondered whether age might explain why the WHI found harm from hormones where other studies suggested benefits.